"This case study is one of four commissioned by BRACED to assess the links
between resilience and gender in partners’ projects. It documents approaches
used to promote gender equality within the BRACED Myanmar Alliance,
as well as the latent challenges and opportunities in this process...key messages
•
The BRACED Alliance in Myanmar aims
to shift community-level power dynamics, by
increasingly integrating women into decision-
making structures, building their economic
security and honoring their leadership abilities.
•
The project will also inform and drive
strategic policy interventions on women’s
empowerment within climate change and
DRR narratives.
•
However, gender transformation is a
slow and dynamic process. Three years of
resilience programming is not enough time
to recast social norms that have crystallized
over decades.
•
Gender transformation requires us to
redefine gender roles and identities and
to assess the concurrent monitoring and
evaluation of changing social, political and
economic trends as well as how communities
respond to this process.
•
The Myanmar Alliance can set the
foundation and pave the way to build climate-
resilient communities where women equally
drive sustainable development practices..."

"A roadmap to resilience and sustainability: Myanmar’s climate-smart agriculture strategy....."In light of climate change, people often talk about achieving climate resilience and sustainability. How do we get there? Is there a roadmap for climate change adaptation and mitigation?
At first, it might seem daunting to address climate change in Myanmar. Germanwatch’s Climate Risk Index for 1994-2013 ranked Myanmar as the second most vulnerable country in the world, after Honduras. In 2008, category 4 cyclone Nargis hit the country. According to a World Bank report, Nargis severely affected the country’s agriculture sector with losses equivalent to 80,000 tons and damaging 251,000 tons of stored crops, across 34,000 hectares of cropland.
Myanmar is an agriculture-based country, with 61% of the country’s 53 million people depending on agriculture for their living. The country has also been experiencing more climate extremes like drought, flood, sea-level rise and natural disasters.
The recent launching of Myanmar’s Climate-Smart Agriculture Strategy has paved the path towards guided planning for national climate change adaptation and mitigation. Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) focuses on three pillars in tackling climate change: food security, adaptation, and mitigation.
The first national consultation meeting on ‘Climate-Smart Agriculture Strategies in Myanmar’ was conducted in September 2013, facilitated by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in Southeast Asia and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).
The strategy aligns with the country’s National Adaptation and Plan of Action (NAPA) for climate change, which prioritizes agriculture, early warning systems and forest in its plans and development initiatives.
The strategy institutionalizes Climate-Smart Villages in Myanmar as a community-based approach to a climate-resilient and sustainable agricultural development. These are benchmark villages that are vulnerable to climate change impacts and where CSA interventions will be tested, prioritized and implemented in close cooperation with the village, government units, and other stakeholders.
The foundation has been laid. The next challenge now is translating the strategy into on-the-ground initiatives to achieve agricultural productivity and have climate-ready villages, provinces, and country."

Language:

English

Source/publisher:

Myanmar Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers (CGIAR)

"Myanmar’s climate is changing and climate variability already affects communities and socioeconomic
sectors in the country. Some climate change impacts are already observable and there is
broad scientific consensus that further change will occur. Even with significant global climate
mitigation (activities and technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions), economic sectors,
local communities and natural ecosystems in Myanmar will be strongly affected by climate change as
a result of the emissions already in the atmosphere. Adaptation is therefore necessary for reducing
Myanmar’s vulnerability to climate variability and change.
National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) serve as simplified, rapid and direct channels for
Least Developed Countries to identify and communicate priority activities to address their urgent and
immediate adaptation needs. NAPAs emerged from the multilateral discussions on adaptation
measures within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)1,2. Myanmar’s NAPA
therefore specifies 32 priority activities (referred to as Priority Adaptation Projects) for effective
climate change adaptation for eight main sectors/themes (i.e. four Project Options per sector/theme),
namely: i) Agriculture; ii) Early Warning Systems; iii) Forest; iv) Public Health; v) Water Resources; vi)
Coastal Zone; vii) Energy, and Industry; and viii) Biodiversity(Table 1)..."

"Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to Myanmar, as well as objectives and
methodology of the NBSAP. In Chapter 2, a detailed description about the diversity in
ecosystems, habitats and species in Myanmar is presented, including the indication on species’
status as being endemic, threatened or invasive. Chapter 3 discusses the background of national
policies, institutions and legal frameworks applicable to biodiversity conservation in Myanmar.
Chapter 4 analyses and highlights conservation priorities, major threats to the conservation of
biodiversity as well as the important matter of sustainable and equitable use of biological
resources in Myanmar. Chapter 5 presents the comprehensive national strategy and action plans
for implementing biodiversity conservation in Myanmar within a 5-year framework that includes
strengthening and expanding on priority sites for conservation, mainstreaming of biodiversity
conservation in other sectors and policies, implementing of priority species conservation,
supporting for more active participation of NGOs and other institutions in society towards
biodiversity conservation, implementing actions towards biosafety and invasive species issues,
strengthening legislative process for environmental conservation and enhancing awareness on
biodiversity conservation. In this chapter, sustainable management of natural resources and
development of ecotourism are also mentioned. Chapter 6 presents the required institutional
mechanism for improving biodiversity conservation, the monitoring and evaluation of the
implementation, as well as sustainability, of the NBSAP.
It is trusted that the NBSAP provides a comprehensive framework for planning biodiversity
conservation, management and utilization in a sustainable manner, as well as to ensure the long
term survival of Myanmar’s rich biodiversity..."